Article Types Accepted

• Research Article*
• Research Report*

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Guidelines for Prospective Authors

What we publish

The China Quarterly is the leading interdisciplinary journal in China studies. We publish original, rigorous scholarship that advances our understanding of contemporary China — its politics, society, economy, culture, international relations and Global China. We also welcome work on Greater China, including Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau.

We publish two types of contribution

• Research articles (up to 9,000 words): These should make a substantial contribution that is both theoretically informed and empirically grounded. We expect research articles to engage with relevant scholarly debates and to offer original analysis that moves those debates forward.
• Research reports (up to 4,500 words): These are shorter contributions that may emphasise either theoretical or empirical innovation. A research report might present important new empirical findings that the field needs to engage with, or it might offer a fresh theoretical or conceptual intervention. It need not do both, but it must do at least one compellingly.

What makes a paper right for The China Quarterly?

The single most important criterion for publication in The China Quarterly is that your paper tells us something interesting and important about China. This means more than simply using Chinese data or focusing on a Chinese case. Your paper should inform and deepen our understanding of contemporary China in ways that matter to an interdisciplinary community of China scholars.

In practice, this means we are looking for work that does the following:

• Engages with questions of significance for China studies. The best submissions are framed around puzzles, debates, or gaps in knowledge that China scholars across disciplines will recognise as important. Ask yourself: why should someone who studies China—but not necessarily your specific discipline or sub-topic—care about this paper?
• Speaks to an interdisciplinary readership. The China Quarterly’s audience includes political scientists, sociologists, anthropologists, economists, historians, legal scholars, and others. Work that is framed exclusively within a single disciplinary conversation, using Chinese data as one case among many, may be better suited to a disciplinary journal. We welcome methodological and theoretical sophistication, but it should be in the service of advancing China studies, not as an end in itself.
• Engages with the existing China studies literature. We expect authors to situate their work within ongoing scholarly conversations about China. Your paper should demonstrate familiarity with how other China scholars have approached your topic and should make clear how your contribution builds on, challenges, or extends that body of work.
• Addresses contemporary China. Our core focus is the post-reform era. We do publish work with a longer historical arc, but where papers draw on earlier periods, they must be framed in terms of how they help us understand China today. Purely historical treatments of pre-reform China are unlikely to be suitable.

What is less likely to be suitable?

To help you assess whether The China Quarterly is the right home for your work, the following types of submission are common but rarely successful with us:

• Papers where China is the case but not the question. If your primary contribution is to a disciplinary debate — in economics, political science, sociology, or another field — and China serves mainly as one empirical setting, the paper is likely better placed in a disciplinary journal. We are looking for work where China itself is central to the intellectual contribution.
• Descriptive or policy-oriented pieces without analytical depth. We value empirically rich work, but description alone is not sufficient. Similarly, while we welcome policy-relevant research, papers that read primarily as policy briefs or commentaries rather than scholarly analysis are unlikely to be suitable.
• Narrowly technical work. Papers that are primarily methodological contributions, or that rely heavily on technical approaches without making their significance accessible to a broad China studies audience, are rarely a good fit.
• Papers that do not engage with the China studies literature. If your bibliography consists primarily of non-China-focused sources and your framing does not engage with how China scholars have debated your topic, this is a strong signal that the paper may not be well targeted for our journal.

A note on abstracts and accessibility

Because The China Quarterly serves an interdisciplinary readership, clarity and accessibility are essential—and this begins with your abstract. Your abstract should be a straightforward overview of your paper that any China scholar can understand, regardless of their disciplinary background. Avoid jargon, technical terminology, and discipline-specific shorthand. The abstract is your opportunity to get readers (and indeed reviewers) interested enough to read the full article; if it is opaque to non-specialists, it has not done its job.

This principle extends to the paper as a whole. While we recognise that some degree of specialist language is unavoidable, authors should write with the full breadth of the CQ readership in mind. Where technical concepts are necessary, they should be clearly explained. The most impactful work in China studies is that which communicates its significance widely, not just to those already working in the same sub-field.

The same applies to methods. We welcome methodologically sophisticated work, including advanced quantitative approaches, but authors must present their methods in a way that is broadly consumable by our interdisciplinary audience. This means clearly explaining your methodological choices and their rationale, ensuring that non-specialists can follow the logic of your analysis, and foregrounding substantive findings rather than technical procedures. A paper whose contribution can only be appreciated by readers who share the author’s methodological training is unlikely to achieve the broad impact that publication in The China Quarterly should offer.

Before you submit

We encourage prospective authors to consider the following questions before submitting:

• Does my paper advance our understanding of contemporary China in ways that an interdisciplinary audience of China scholars will find significant?
• Is my paper framed around a question or puzzle about China, rather than a disciplinary question that happens to use Chinese evidence?
• Have I engaged substantively with the existing China studies literature on my topic?
• Would a China scholar outside my own discipline find this paper accessible, relevant, and important?
• Have I read recent issues of The China Quarterly, and can I identify where my paper fits within the conversations taking place in the journal?

If you can answer yes to these questions with confidence, we would welcome your submission. If you are uncertain, we would encourage you to read recent issues of the journal to assess whether your work is well aligned with what we publish.

We receive a large volume of submissions and are committed to handling each one fairly and efficiently. Clear and appropriate targeting of your work helps us—and helps you—by ensuring that your paper reaches the right audience and receives the most productive engagement.

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Guidelines for special section proposals

The Executive Committee of The China Quarterly will review special section proposals twice a year. Interested scholars may submit a proposal to the journal by 1st May or by 1st October every year.

All proposals should include:

• a working title;
• names, affiliations and short biographies of guest editors (100 words each);
• a 1000-word synopsis outlining the proposed special section theme and its significance to the field of China studies;
• between five and seven 200-word abstracts for proposed articles on that theme, with the relevant authors names and affiliations.

Special sections proposals will be selected on the basis of meeting some but not necessarily all of the following criteria:

• the extent to which they represent a high-quality, innovative and important contribution to China studies;
• inclusion of scholars at various stages of their careers and working in a variety of disciplines;
• the use of a diverse range of methods.

Before 1st July, or before 1st December, the Executive Committee will choose special section proposals to proceed to the next stage, possibly requesting refinement or suggesting the inclusion of other papers. The guest-editors of the selected special section proposal(s) will submit the full section for peer review no later than 1st February of the following year if selected in June, or 1st July if selected in November.

Individual manuscripts should be no more than 9,000 words, including footnotes and references.

In accordance with our triple-anonymous review policy, all author identities will be redacted before consideration by the editors. Any correspondence or enquiries must be addressed to the China Quarterly office (chinaq@soas.ac.uk).

Articles that are accepted through peer review will subsequently appear on FirstView when ready, before the publication of the special section in full and in print.

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More information about preparing your materials for submission, submitting your materials and the publication process itself can be found in the relevant tabs under 'Author Instructions' (in the navigation panel on the left-hand side of this page).